Education Week - May 15, 2013 - 20

EDUCATION WEEK

MAY 15, 2013

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COMMENTARY
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Moving Beyond Punishment
Treatment Is Key to Keeping Schools Safe

By Lisa Madigan & John Suthers

t the age of 16, Don was the
kind of student who keeps
school resource officers up
at night, with mental- and
behavioral-health issues
that led to his being found
with a weapon at school, throwing a rock
into an occupied vehicle, and taking part
in conduct the law deems disorderly.
Yet, less than a year later, he was flourishing academically, doing well in extracurricular activities, and serving as a remarkable role model to three little girls
who shared the same foster home where
he lived.
Don—a pseudonym for a real student—
was lucky. He could easily have been expelled from school and separated from the
teachers and students who ultimately led
him toward the positive behaviors that
put his life back on track. Even luckier for
Don, he got help. Right now, about 1 in 5
children and adolescents ages 9 to 17 in
the United States has a diagnosable mental-health disorder that impairs his or her
life and, in any given year, 4 out of 5 young
people with such disorders fail to receive
the treatment they need.
As state attorneys general, we know
the evidence shows that mental- and

behavioral-health treatments and efforts
to foster safe school climates go hand in
hand when it comes to eliminating school
violence. As schools and school districts
consider various approaches to connecting
students and families with these services,
we encourage them to focus on programs
that make wise use of public funds and
achieve a proven impact on students’ lives.
For example, upon referral from the juvenile-justice system, Don was enrolled in
multidimensional treatment foster care,
or mtfc, which has been deemed a model
program by the Center for the Study and
Prevention of Violence (an organization
affiliated with the Institute of Behavioral
Science at the University of Colorado at
Boulder).
Mtfc is used as an alternative to putting
youths in a group home or juvenile facility.
It provides foster parents specially trained
on how to positively guide children’s behavior, as well as ongoing supervision by a
program case manager and frequent contact with teachers, work supervisors, and
other adults in the child’s life. Originally
developed by the Oregon Social Learning
Center for young people in the juvenilejustice system, it has been shown to reduce arrests and it returns nearly $5 in

benefits for every dollar spent on it.
But a key factor in Don’s success with
mtfc was his ability to continue attending
public school, which enabled him to interact positively with other students who
were doing the right thing, as opposed
to being surrounded only by those who
could lead him into more trouble. He also
received daily reading and study time at
home and maintained close contact with
school personnel. Staying in school also
enabled him to participate in activities
that required discipline and positive interactions with peers, including football,
weight lifting, and track and field.
Functional family therapy, or fft , an
alternative to out-of-home placements for
young people in trouble with the law, is
another model program. It involves training parents to positively guide their children’s behavior. The students whose families received fft were half as likely to be
rearrested as those whose families didn’t.
Fft saves society nearly $31,000 per participant through reductions in recidivism
and other benefits.
Multisystemic therapy, or mst, is another
alternative to out-of-home placement that
keeps kids in school. It targets juvenile
offenders by addressing the multiple factors—in peer, school, neighborhood, and
family environments—that connect to

truancy and delinquency. In one long-term
study, a control group of children who received family therapy instead of mst were
62 percent more likely to have been arrested by an average age of 29. Mst is also
cost-effective, saving the public more than
$4 for every dollar invested in it.
While all these approaches have had
a proven impact, there are challenges to
ensuring that more children have access
to them and other mental-health and behavioral interventions. For one, teachers
should receive training in how to identify
signs of mental illness and then be prepared to refer students for treatment.
While many teachers may understandably
balk at the idea of taking on one more responsibility, they are often the adults who
spend the most time with students. And,
in many cases, their ability to sustain effective classroom environments may depend on getting help for individual students in trouble.
But teachers can’t do it alone. They need
support from administrators and school
PAGE 23 >

LISA MADIGAN and JOHN SUTHERS are the
attorneys general for Illinois and Colorado,
respectively, and members of Fight Crime:
Invest in Kids, a bipartisan, nonprofit anti-crime
organization based in Washington.

We Must Create Opportunities for STEM Learning
By Sara Martinez Tucker

ur country is in trouble. That’s the key
takeaway from my experience as the
undersecretary in the U.S. Department of Education. We
have been inching along
in math and science
while other countries are speeding forward. The United States ranked 25th
in math and 17th in science in the
2009 Program for International Student Assessment.
Education outcomes such as these
mean our country’s businesses will
have a tough time finding American workers who have the math and
science skills to carry out the jobs of
today, much less tomorrow. A 2011 Manpower survey found that more than half
of American employers were struggling to
find workers to fill key jobs that required advanced science and math skills. Case in point: The
ceo of Siemens reported his company had more
than 3,000 U.S. job openings, but only 10 percent
of the applicants were able to pass the test for prospective employees. In other words, 90 percent of the
applicants didn’t have the schooling to do the job.
The prestigious President’s Council of Advisors on
Science and Technology, or pcast, estimates that our
country needs to graduate about 1 million more profes-

“

We’ve got a lot of work to do.
Our country is just
beginning to wake up
to the fact that
growth in STEM
jobs is three
times faster than
in other sectors.”

sionals in science, technology,
engineering, and math over
the next decade to stay competitive globally. And yet degrees in the
stem fields account for only 17 percent
of all degrees awarded in the United States,
compared with the international average
of 26 percent.
While African-Americans, Hispanics, and
Native Americans make up a third of the U.S.
population, they represent only 9.1 percent of
college-educated Americans in the science and
engineering workforce. Women are also severely
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lacking in the stem workforce. Fewer than 10 percent of
U.S. engineers are female, even though women constitute almost half the nation’s labor force.
We’ve got a lot of work to do. Our country is just beginning to wake up to the fact that growth in stem jobs is
three times faster than in other sectors. Students who
are facing the job search are getting the message that
stem workers earn 26 percent more on average than
their non-stem counterparts. What all students need is
the kind of K-12 education that will equip them to succeed in college and go on to earn a living wage.
How can we get this done? The message from the
statistics is clear: We’ve got to make math and science
amazing and accessible for more young people. We’ve got
to revitalize stem studies for our country to grow and
maintain its global economic standing.
I have seen the phenomenal progress that the National Math and Science Initiative has made since it
was launched in 2007 by leaders in business and science. The initiative is raising the academic bar in our
public schools. More than 60,000 teachers have received
personalized, intensive training so they can raise the
level of rigor in their classrooms and have more students succeeding in math and science. More than 462
high schools are expanding Advanced Placement classes
so that more students can master college-level work.
As the president and ceo of nmsi, I’m particularly
heartened that qualifying scores for African-American
and Hispanic students in the schools participating in
our Advanced Placement program are averaging a 107
percent increase in ap math, science, and English the

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Education Week - May 15, 2013

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